Thursday, December 25, 2008

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Hitting level 76 has turned the old level 70 daily quests green, which reduces the XP by 14,000 each day (including the Shattrath cooking daily, which I can't always do anyway). I've done all the Sholazar Basin quests that I can do, and the dailies are still not available. El of El's Anglin' left a comment on my previous post that some new pacifistic dailies should open up at level 77. Until then, I think I'll try to maximize my XP by skipping the fishing daily (0 XP) and re-doing the Troll Patrol daily to do the Alchemist's Apprentice four extra times (five if I can't do the Shattrath cooking daily that day). That will keep my total number of dailies to 25 per day (in case the Troll Patrol trick is considered an exploit) and get me the most XP each day. Of course, if I can't do all the Troll Patrol subquests, I'll just substitute six more Alchemist's Apprentice quests.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Made it to level 76 by fishing up my hundredth Strange Engine Part and doing the Alchemist's Apprentice over & over because I couldn't do all of today's Troll Patrol subquests. I also did Digging Through Bones (which I had tried once before, long ago) and I didn't have to do anything to help. Unfortunately, the quest was gray so I only got 1100 XP. I've also done over 500 daily quests now.

Wowhead says there are two new daily quests I can do at level 76, but I think they're behind some level 77 prerequisites, since the questgivers have no "!"...

Monday, December 15, 2008

OK, I managed to do the first timed Troll Patrol (all the quests were non-violent ones) and did it just in time to get the Congratulations! bonus, which gave me even more XP than wowhead claims (31,750; may vary by level). The next day I couldn't do two of the four subquests, but after doing all the other dailies I went back and discovered I could drop & re-get Troll Patrol and do the dailies again! The subquests don't change, but I can always do at least two of the four subquests, each of which is worth 5300 XP. I mostly did the Alchemist's Apprentice to practice it.

I might skip the fishing daily, because it's worth 0 XP, and I can substitute a Troll Patrol subquest. The subquests are worth the least of my dailies, so I won't drop any others yet. I'll do the fishing daily again when I hit 80.

I'll try to do Troll Patrol last, so I know exactly how many dailies I have left (sometimes I can't do the Shattrath cooking daily, and it's possible I won't be able to get Venture Bay to be Alliance so I can do Riding the Red Rocket). I can discover if I can do all four subquests (a 44.4% chance), and do the subquests until I have 6 dailies left, which should be just enough to do all of Troll Patrol and Congratulations (assuming I can do them fast enough). Of course, if I can't do all four subquests, I can just do some of them over & over until I hit 25 dailies done.

With this additional XP, I should be able to level up faster than one level per week.

UPDATE: It's even better than that, though this might be considered an exploit...

If you abandon Troll Patrol after having done some dailies, those dailies DON'T COUNT once you log off & on. While logged in, they count towards your maximum of 25 per day, but logging recalculates the totals in some way. The upshot is, I can do Troll Patrol subquests as many times as I want. However, each subquest is only worth about 1/15 of an XP bar, so I will probably only do it if I'm close to a new level. Addendum: it seems it's the "duplicate" dailies that don't count, i.e. if you do Alchemist's Apprentice the first time, it counts as a daily, but if you do it a second time, that one won't count if you log out and back in.

UPDATE TWO: Keep in mind that if you can't do the subquests fast enough to get the Congratulations! quest, just DON'T turn in "Troll Patrol" - drop it, (log off & on if you have fewer than 6 daily quest slots remaining), and take Troll Patrol again until you do them within the 20 minute limit.

UPDATE THREE: It appears the random subquests aren't independent; you get one of three random 'sets' of subquests, and luckily, the two quests I want to avoid are in the same set, so I have a 2/3 chance to do all the subquests instead of 4/9...

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Noor made it to level 74, which opens up the Troll Patrol dailies (luckily, I didn't have to do the quest to kill 10 scourge to open it, just the parachute one). I won't be able to do Troll Patrol every day, since one of the random quests is to kill some of the swamp elementals, and I'm not sure about Throwing Down, where you blow up spider tunnels (because a bunch of spiders come out and die after you do it). I did Throwing Down once as a non-daily to open up the daily quests themselves.

If I can do all the dailies (including the Shattrath cooking daily) and do Troll Patrol fast enough to get the Congratulations! quest, I can get 318,550 XP each day (4 bars of XP at level 74). Without the cooking daily and only doing 2 of the Troll Patrol quests, I can get 247,650 XP (3.1 bars).

Monday, December 8, 2008

Well, after trying to skill up skinning on Saturday morning/afternoon by only skinning found corpses for eight hours and getting to a skill level of just 77, I decided I had to get out my Deathknight to create some corpses (Maiev is still a pretty low population server). I only cheated in the old world until Noor was at 300 skinning. She needed to be at least 365 skinning (plus her +5 skinning enchant) to skin the Jormungar Tunnelers, which are level 73 and 74. She got from 300 to 365 in Outland without more cheating, as there were a lot of DKs out killing beasts and my fast roflcopter made it fairly easy.

Since I still can't take a grandmaster gathering skill without losing the still-buggy Gaining the Advantage daily, I decided to drop skinning and take up herbalism, and got that up high enough not to miss a daily.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Level 72 opened up some quests that I could do in rather creative ways...

No Place to Run, while not a very pacifistic quest (since you're helping Serinar set up a trap to slaughter all the cultists), I was able to do with more help from Coopthar the paladin, healing the crystal until it was fully charged. The crystal aggros mobs, so my earlier tries using a target dummy wouldn't distract them long enough. But the joke's on Serinar -- cultists can still chase me beyond the limit where the destructive ward is supposed to stop them.

A similar quest, Mystery of the Infinite, has me and my future level 80 self defend an Hourglass of Eternity from dragon mobs. I wielded my Big Iron Fishing Pole and my future self (who apparently has given up pacifism) was able to take on all the mobs long enough to finish the quest, while I just healed and blinded.

Finally, after thinking I had done all the quests I could get from the goblins in north-central Dragonblight, I found out that I could do Shaved Ice entirely by mining Crystalline Ice Elemental corpses that other players left (in my case, a Blood Elf death knight)... and this brings me to my next weekend project.

In order to continue to do Gaining the Advantage, I'll need to drop mining and get my skinning up high enough to avoid missing a day. I think on Saturday morning after doing Gaining the Advantage with mining, I'll switch to skinning. This will give me nearly two days to get my skinning up to at least 285 so I can skin the lowest-level (58) Hellfire Peninsula mobs using +5 skinning gloves by Sunday night. Then I can get my skinning up until I can do Soft Packaging, which I can do with just Master skinning in case Gaining the Advantage is still bugged and won't give the quest to Grandmasters.

After that, I think I'll just go right to Herbalism. Death Knights made releveling mining difficult since many of them seem to have blacksmithing/mining, so Herbalism (with +10 gloves) should be faster to level the next weekend.

I'll try to skill up skinning legitimately (by only skinning found corpses), but if I really have to, I can get out my death knight and create some...